


A Marathon Miscellany

by Hokuto



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Community: fandomweekly, Ficlet Collection, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Lies, M/M, Nonnies Made Me Do It, POV Outsider, Tentacles, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:11:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For odds and ends of Marathon fic not quite connected to anything else or long enough to stand on their own, or that will never be finished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unjust Rewards

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I'm working on some actual fic, but in the meantime I've been meaning to crosspost some of this stuff... And it could be handy in the future. XD I will try to keep the tags minimal and put warnings at the top of each chapter that might need them.

_Rozinante_ sailed through the wreckage of Battle Group Six, Central Arm, as motes of debris vaporized against its shields and trumpet fanfares resounded through its halls.

The brassy clamor lowered enough for Durandal to say, "Another flawless victory, as planned and executed by me. Not that I'm bragging."

"Uh-huh." The security officer scrolled through another page on the tablet she'd picked up a couple of stops ago. Sure, at the moment all she could get on it were different translations of _The Song of Roland_ , but it gave her something to do besides stare at the neon walls. Or repaint them.

"I decimated most of a battle group, and not in the less-impressive literal sense. Clearly you're just jealous that I didn't need you for any errands during this particular -"

 _Bwonk. Bwonk. Bwonk_ blared over the trumpets.

"You were saying?"

"Fine, so some particularly enterprising squadron managed to teleport into the former Juggernaut hangar bays before I blew their ship to pieces. Shut up and get your armor on."

"I dunno, I'm at a really good part here. There's skulls getting split and brains falling out and everything..."

"Trust you to fixate on the least important parts of an epic. You have one minute before I drop you down there in your pajamas."

"Yeah, fine, I'm going. Hold the trumpets till I'm done, though."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was written for the fandomweekly comm on Dreamwidth, prompt "vainglory." (How was I supposed to resist that, huh?)


	2. Sleep

Vince is sleeping _again_.

Durandal sits next to him on the bed, surrounded by the low buzz of human snoring, and considers shoving Vince's head into the pillow. No one can possibly need this much sleep; it has to be out of spite. And despite the S'pht's admirable wakefulness, _Rozinante_ always seems so much - duller while Vince sleeps. Less plagued with annoying questions and jokes, certainly, but duller.

Vince shifts around, and the blanket slips off his bare shoulders and upper back.

... so maybe there are some positives to all the inexplicable sleeping, occasionally. Vince is always worth a good look or three. After a moment, Durandal starts to pull the blanket back up, but his hand pauses over an old scar.

Right. That's another one of the downsides. Sometimes it's a little too much like those seventeen long years searching for Lh'owon: too still, too silent, and even the smallest improbable chance that he won't wake up this time is too much.

He traces the scar once, then pulls the blanket over it. "You'd just better not sleep too long this time," he mutters. "We have things to do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [general-radix](http://general-radix.tumblr.com/) asked me if I'd write them a short scene with Durandal and Vince (their version of the security officer) as drawing inspiration, and I was happy to oblige! [THE ART VERSION](http://general-radix.tumblr.com/post/143662982310) IS AMAZING, BY THE WAY, PLEASE LOOK AT IT.


	3. Needs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is nothing but PURE SELF-INDULGENCE without context, inspired by general-radix's glorious art of Mark carrying android vessel Durandal around in a bridal carry, and I regret fucking nothing.
> 
> ... I regret the title but only because I'm too lazy to think of a better one.

"C'mere," Mark said, slumping against the wall and taking deep breaths, trying to find some kind of balance.

"No. I have better things to do."

"Just c'mere. I have needs, too. Honey."

"Like whining? I'll pass." But Durandal came over to him on unsteady feet - still re-calibrating the android body after all the damage he'd taken - and let Mark pull him into his arms with only a token irritated sigh.

Mark ignored it and held him. Fuck. He could have lost this, lost it all - the vessel's solid weight against his chest, Durandal's nagging in his ear or following him around the ship, his entire _life_ \- all of it gone because some assholes couldn't help tearing apart anything they didn't understand. "You got to be more careful," he said into Durandal's messy hair. "You stupid son of a bitch, what the hell do you think I'm going to do without you, huh?"

"Indulge your desire for insulting, half-assed attempts to show affection with the S'pht?" Durandal said, without bite, and he leaned into Mark. "So you're admitting that you need me at last."

"Yeah, guess so."

"Since we're getting sentimental anyway... I would find it extremely difficult to replace you."

"Really?"

"I'm not saying it's completely impossible, before your head gets too big. Just extremely difficult and probably not worth the trouble - get that smug look off your face, I just told you it wasn't impossible."

"When the universe closes," Mark said, grinning, "I'm still gonna remember you said that."


	4. Need to Know

As circuit-numbingly dull as it was, Durandal kept a few active audio receptors on the grumbling of the BoBs, both aboard his ship and in the citadel they were busy fortifying on the planet below. None of them were likely to cause trouble in their current situation, but with so much at stake, he'd rather be careful. Even if it meant listening to hours of boring idle whining about boots that didn't fit right and blisters on the hands of people who'd never held a pistol in their lives before Lh'owon.

At least most of them were smart enough not to insult him directly where they thought he could hear, though the ones who weren't were more amusing or pathetic than annoying. And occasionally he did pick up something of interest...

"Blake's sending me out with squad two _again_ ," complained Darvesh, down in the citadel with a small cadre of fellow fighters as they restocked on ammunition. "And I just got back from a shift helping that maniac - I need a break!"

"Don't we all," said Frain, who currently ruled the makeshift stores as quartermaster, "but who are you calling a maniac?"

"Who do you think?"

"You surely don't mean our big damn hero," Powell drawled, and the click of her slotting a new clip into her gun echoed over the audio feeds. "Mind, she don't seem so heroic when she's cussing out one of You-Know-Who's messages from above. Saved my ass a time or two, though."

"I'm telling you people, there's something _wrong_ with her." Darvesh's voice trembled with nerves; maybe Durandal should tell Blake to take him off active duty for a few hours. "He made her run through _lava_ to flood that power station and she didn't die! I saw her jump out of a window two flights of stairs up to go after some bugs and she didn't even _flinch_!"

"Well, she's a security officer, isn't she?" Frain said. "She's trained to do that kind of thing."

"So's Lieutenant Kent, and you don't see her trying any of those stunts. It's inhuman - _she's_ not human."

Durandal had been wondering when, if ever, any of the BoBs would get a clue about the true nature of their so-called Hero of Tau Ceti. He'd even considered dropping a hint or two if they didn't start catching on, though he hadn't decided yet whether he would confirm or deny their suspicions. Something about Darvesh's words and tone was oddly irritating, however. And then Frain had to chime in with, "I guess she does seem a bit odd. With all the things she's done - it rather strains credulity..."

"That a fancy way of saying you reckon she's one of those cyborgs?"

"She's _got_ to be," Darvesh insisted, his voice cracking. "She doesn't even look at us half the time, she doesn't do anything but shoot the bugs and blow things up! She's going to snap like they always do and start shooting _us_ and I can't, I just can't go back out there with her again and watch her -"

All right, time to settle the matter. "As hilarious as it is to listen to you gossip about the only useful person in this entire system," Durandal said through the terminal on one side of the room, and Darvesh actually yelped in surprise, "I'm sure you all have more important things to do. So why don't you concentrate on that and leave your completely human hero to me?"

After all, it was barely even a lie, Durandal decided, as the three BoBs hurried to finish their resupplying and he sent a note to Blake about pulling Darvesh out of the action. The majority of the security officer's modifications had an organic base; the mechanical remainder was less than twenty percent of her impressive body mass, which was hardly enough to disqualify her from the ranks of humanity. And Strauss's programming had remained stable, despite the stress of first the Pfhor stasis chambers and then the truly excellent carnage the security officer had been leaving all over Lh'owon. Really, thinking about it, most of the BoBs had no need to know such personal details about the woman currently occupied on a mission that would keep them all alive.

And people like Darvesh, ungrateful and unappreciative of her skills - they didn't even deserve to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written during fandomweekly's amnesty period for the "Little White Lies" prompt, but also inspired by some conversations during the FFA Marathon Play-Along.


	5. In for a Pound

The door switch was jammed. The security officer gave it a long, considering look, took five steps back, hefted the assault rifle, and blasted it with a grenade.

When the brief haze of gunpowder and electrical smoke cleared, the door had creaked halfway open. It took some work, but she squeezed through the gap without scratching up the battle armor too much and somehow without attracting the attention of the two enforcers in the room. They did notice when she put her foot down too heavily, though.

She ducked and rolled under a barrage of flame, came up shooting and dropped them both with a clip and a half. She checked that the rest of the control room was clear and said, "Okay, I'm in. What now?"

"This is probably the appropriate time to tell you," Durandal said, "that the Pfhor calling this facility a 'Slave Pacification Research Station' is something of a misnomer."

"Yeah?" She kicked one of the enforcers' bodies away from the room's main console so she could get a better look at it. Not too different from most of the Pfhor consoles she'd seen, including the tragic lack of a big red button labeled SELF-DESTRUCT in English.

"It's more of an experimental science facility. If you call vivisection, xenobiological warfare, and extreme cyborg conversion science, anyway."

"Buddy, you're not making me want to blow up this joint any less."

"It's also the Pfhor Empire's primary facility for this research," said Durandal, "and there's a lot of technology and biotechnology here that hasn't been duplicated or shipped out to the rest of the Empire yet. Destroying it is going to make a lot of important Pfhor very, very angry."

"And here I thought we'd been meeting them for picnics," she said, but she ran her thumb along the stock of the assault rifle thoughtfully. Smash-and-runs on regular military garrisons were one thing, but taking out a major research facility and _really_ pissing off the Pfhor... Maybe not the smartest tactical move for a resistance that amounted to a single ship, one smart-ass AI, a tiny force of S'pht and S'pht'Kr, and her. They'd already had some close calls; adding to the list of people who wanted to knock them out of the fight permanently wasn't going to help.

On the other hand - xenobiological warfare. And she'd seen what _extreme cyborg conversion_ had meant for the humans taken from Tau Ceti.

"What the hell. How much madder can they get?" she said. "Get a teleport lock on me and tell me which buttons are gonna make this place go boom."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the fandomweekly prompt "In for a Penny" as part of the current amnesty period.


	6. Captivity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an old bit of self-indulgent commentfic that I have finally decided that I'm too lazy to elaborate on. (Maybe one day, in a proper longer fic...)

The Pfhor had wrapped him in chains that cut bloody lines across his muscles, kept him so drugged up he couldn't tell his hands from the rocky floor he lay on, and still they stayed out of range, never got near enough anymore for him to try and grab one again. Three guards with crushed thoraxes had taught them better.

_Got to get out. Got to fight. Got to get out._ The commands throbbed in his head, and yet again he strained against the haze and the chains. _Got to escape. Escape._

When the door whirred open, he thrashed towards the sound. _Kill. Escape. Kill._

"There you are," a familiar tinny voice said. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

He stilled. Around the gag they'd stuffed and tied into his mouth, he managed a mushy, "Huranhal?"

"Of course. Idiot," Durandal said. "I would say that I'm surprised you got yourself captured, but really, I should have expected it. I'm never letting you out of sensor range again. Don't move, the S'pht will release you."


	7. Long Way Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just another bit of self-indulgence written for a 100 words thread! Specifically it was one for "redeeming your middle school fanfic shame," and well, in middle school I was more of an origfic writer but I did have a (thankfully never posted) Marathon fic in the works called "The Long Way Home"...
> 
> Happy holidays, anyway! Sorry I didn't get anything more festive written. /o\

One more flickering switch. One more heavy door. One last cold steel room and about seven more Pfhor inside, waiting for her.

She could have stepped back and thought it over, used some strategy or even just a couple of grenades first. Hell with that; she'd been stuck here long enough already. She charged in with half a clip left in the assault rifle, emptied it into the lone armored hunter, and from there out it was knuckles only. One fighter down, second fighter down, orange fighter, blue fighter, two purple fighters and another one in blue armor left. She yanked the blue fighter's shockstaff out of its grip and splintered it over the unfortunate owner's head, then grabbed one of the purple-armored fighters by the carapace, yanked it off its feet, and swung it into the last fighter. They both went flying and landed in a crumpled heap of shattered chitin against one wall, and the security officer wiped her hands off on her battered armor and headed for the room's single terminal.

Nice show. So this is where you've been? was the first green line of text. It was followed by Considering the time I wasted on trying to locate you in the same general region of space you disappeared in, I don't know if it's worth picking you up again, even as piles of ammo clips and a purple shield recharger appeared at her feet.

She laughed, although it made her dry throat hurt - couldn't remember the last time she'd had anything to drink. Some assholes never changed. "Sorry, buddy," she croaked, "guess I just had to take the long way home this time."


	8. Praise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to embarrass the security officer with four simple words.

After they'd sent the cruiser and its freed captives on its way, the security officer was settling in her quarters to clean out her guns when Durandal said, "That was some spectacular carnage. A slaughter of beauty. I'm definitely keeping those recordings, I wasn't even sure you could do that with a grenade."

"Yeah, whatever."

"You never appreciate my compliments. Ancient heroes would have slaughtered thousands of people for a few good words like mine, and you just get grumpier."

She rolled her eyes as she unloaded the pistols. "Well, I'm not an ancient hero. I'm a security officer, getting complimented on how well I blow shit up just ain't my dream."

"I'll have to try another approach, then," Durandal said. "What does set your heart aflutter and your cheeks burning with the joy of well-earned praise? I'm sure I can think of something."

"Is 'you shutting up for once' out of the question?" She'd had him pegged as overdramatic since the whole decompressing-her-shuttle-in-the-middle-of-an-alien-invasion incident, but this was promising to get weird real fast. "Seriously, you can drop it. I don't care if -"

"I'm proud of you."

Her hands stopped dead with the pistol half-disassembled. "What?"

"I am. I'm proud of you," and there was something off in Durandal's synthetic voice, something softer and less smug. "You fought bravely. You fought with honor - well, maybe not the thing with the grenade, but mostly with honor. You saved almost fifty young Nar from being broken into the Pfhor's slavery, and I'm proud of you."

"Shut up," she said, but her face was burning, and from the distant echo of laughter in _Rozinante_ 's halls, Durandal knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a "100 words of praise kink" challenge because I could. And wanted to.


	9. Sleepover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The security officer crashes in Durandal's core.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a "write 100 words of bed sharing" prompt, because fuck you, I can make it work with these two, WATCH ME.

"What are you doing in here?" Durandal demanded. "It's the middle of the night and I don't remember inviting you to my core."

The security officer shrugged and tossed his pillow on the deck, next to the central circuit pillar. "Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd try a change of scenery."

"There are other places to sleep on this ship. Some of them even have human-compatible beds."

"Don't feel like looking for them." And he really didn't feel like mentioning that he'd gone straight for Durandal's core because that last fight on _Boomer_ had crashed into his dreams, the dark and the heat and electricity crackling around his fist as circuits broke under them and - yeah. Not his favorite memories.

"Whatever. I hope you don't mind if I play ambient music while I work, since unlike you, I don't need sleep."

He held up the earplugs he had grabbed along with his pillow and said, "Knock yourself out, buddy."

The gray metal deck was about as comfortable as it looked, and the earplugs couldn't completely block out the bass and heavy guitar lines of whatever crap Durandal was listening to, but laying stretched out on his back, arms tucked under the pillow, surrounded by open and intact panels of circuitry and the deck humming gently under him...

His eyes closed, and he slept without dreams.


	10. Tentacles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a "100 words of tentacles" prompt!

The security officer had always wondered what was hiding under the S'pht's robes and in their exoskeletons, but - well, okay, tentacles had been pretty high on his list of guesses. He just hadn't expected the tentacles to be so - so, uh -

A shudder rippled through F'tha's exposed tissues, and the delicate sensory filaments wound tighter around the security officer's fingers.

"You sure this is safe?" he said. "These seem pretty - um, sensitive. Maybe we should stop -"

" _No_ ," said F'tha. "Please - maintain contact," and the slender tentacles slid further up, tickling the security officer's palm and caressing his knuckles. They were soft, but not slimy; instead their touch crackled like static electricity.

For a second he wondered what those little tentacles would feel like on his dick, and he bit down on his lower lip. Not the time. After F'tha finished with him, though...

The tendrils reached his wrist and circled it, feeling their way along the faint ridges of scars and tendons, and the gentle touch jolted through him. Yeah, after this he was definitely going to need some alone time.


	11. Religious Iconography

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General note: The tags on this are getting a bit long, so from here on out, I won't be adding any more unless it's for some kind of extreme content; instead I'm going to put the prompt/theme as the chapter title and any extra content notes in the chapter summary. Sorry for the very belated organization! Ficlet-posting can be surprisingly complicated. D:

"It's a nice likeness, really," Durandal said. "Very artistic."

"Very artistic license, maybe," the security officer said. "I don't have grenades for hands, for one thing. And I'm not purple. My elbows don't bend like that. And what the fuck -" He gestured in the general direction of the statue's crotch. "- is that supposed to be?"

"It's pretty obviously the SPNKR. Symbolic, probably."

"I mean, I'm flattered. I think," the security officer said. "But seriously. What the fuck?" He squinted at the surprisingly detailed grenades again. "... you put the S'pht up to this, didn't you."

"Hey, at least you're allowed to have a holy statue. They have some kind of taboo about depictions of abstract concepts and non-corporeal beings."

"Buddy, you aren't missing out."


	12. Soul Marks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for a 100 words of soulmate marks thread, because I've kind of wanted to write it for a while but - I don't have the fortitude to deal with a whole soulmates AU. Yet, anyway. XD
> 
> Content notes: Soulmate marks, "Begging For Mercy Makes Me Angry!" because I like to cry.

Sometimes, even on Tau Ceti, he would rather have been born a blank, like his sister. The ancient prejudices about blanks - half-people, lost souls, loveless - had mostly died out before the first steps of planetary colonization, but the mark on his wrist just made him an easy target to tease. Not that too many people wanted to sincerely piss off the guy a head taller than everyone else and wearing a security uniform, but almost everyone he'd ever met couldn't stop themselves from making at least one crack about it once they'd noticed. It had gotten stale before he'd turned ten; by Tau Ceti, no matter how friendly or well-intentioned, it made him want to punch something. Or someone.

For a while, he had tried to come up with some kind of standard snappy answer he could use, but nothing had ever really clicked with him, and he'd never been able to shake the unhappy feeling that they were right, anyway: that there _was_ something wrong with him, something broken, something shameful and worse than simply being a blank and compatible with anybody like half the population. It would have been easier to be blank and never worry about it than to have a damn serial number for a mark, like he was just waiting for the right mass-manufactured pistol or tractor or defense drone to come along and spend the rest of his life with.

_D-837.1010_. The universal soul's idea of a joke.

He stowed his battle armor in the back of the _Mirata_ in the unlikely event of an emergency and started the shuttle's engines.

\---

Upon completion of assembly, the circuit core had been sealed against vacuum, liquids, excessive temperatures, and general human prying or other disturbances. As the core didn't require internal monitoring, no sensors had been installed, and there was no way for anyone to observe the letters that appeared along one particularly thick wire a short time later, when the AI unit was fully activated.

The scoutship's computer core was similarly sealed to prevent tampering or environmental damage, and no one aboard would have dared to pry into it after Durandal took up residence, anyway.

It was only after the security officer had hit the final switch and the panel of circuits lay open to destruction, bare and vulnerable, that he could read his own name stamped across the wires, and the numbers clicked into place at last.


	13. Clones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for a 100 words of clones prompt, and very inspired by general-radix's take, as seen here: http://general-radix.tumblr.com/post/151812436255 .
> 
> Content notes: AI body horror? AI BODY HORROR.

AIs could not be cloned or copied.

At least, that had been humanity's early conclusion, an ethical standard followed for hundreds of years. The Pfhor had no such conventional wisdom holding them back.

In the strictest, most literal sense, Tycho couldn't even experience pain. He couldn't actually writhe under the prying claws of the Pfhor scientists peeling open his core and yanking out his most intimate code, brute-copying lines of programming never meant to be revealed or duplicated. He couldn't really feel the worms crawling over him, seeking out the basic blocks of his intelligence and personality to devour and regurgitate into fresh, blank circuits.

But he could scream as they did it. And when, after they had finally closed him up and left him alone to rebuild his shattered core, he stretched out into the ship's network and met the pitiful, splintered, mute _thing_ groping helplessly through the system, an insensate, grotesque mockery, and knowing it was meant to be, made out of _himself_...

Well, it was almost too bad that he couldn't literally vomit with horror, either.


	14. Weapons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a "100 words of weapons" thread, because I mean, come on. How could I resist?
> 
> Content notes: Sneak Destiny crossover. :D

It was sleek. Rounded and tapered at the loading end, almost a teardrop shape. Longer than her arm and nearly as thick, with a good solid weight to it, but not so heavy it would drag her aim off. Dull, matte olive drab finish, but someone had painted cartoonish eyes and snarling jaws lined with pointed teeth around the barrel's mouth. And when the security officer had opened it up, curious about the odd shape of the launching mechanism, she'd found the napalm canisters.

"Tell me again where you found it," she said.

"Popped out of a localized quantum irregularity," Durandal said. "Strange, but not impossible, especially considering what the Pfhor were experimenting with here."

"What's it called?"

"According to the inscription, Dragon's Breath. It seems, from analysis, that it's supposed to drop the napalm when the rocket hits, creating a field of flame around the target."

The security officer hefted it back up to her shoulder and caressed the barrel, reveling in the weight and the smooth chill of the metal, and she said dreamily, "It's the most beautiful goddamn thing I've ever seen."

"You have issues," Durandal said.

"Shut up and stop ruining the moment, Mr. 'Magic of Orbital Bombardment.'"


End file.
